


You're On The Ride, You Might As Well

by icewhisper



Series: Fight or Flight [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash, Wing AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 18:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10996899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Mick had gotten used to the wings. Some days, though, he wondered if he'd ever get used to the little weirdo he called a partner.





	You're On The Ride, You Might As Well

They were friends, but that didn’t mean Len didn’t drive him up a fucking wall most days. Hell, a few years didn’t change the fact that Len was the most anal bastard he’d ever met or that he still did that creepy staring thing that made Mick feel like he was breaking someone down into little pieces. He definitely was, Mick thought, analyzing and weighing the pros and cons of how he could manipulate this or that person to reach his endgame.

If he didn’t know Len as well as he did, he’d think the little weirdo was a step away from becoming a serial killer.

Some days, even Lisa didn’t look convinced, staring at her brother like he was an alien instead of a transgenic science experiment.

“Are we sure he didn’t crack his head open the last time he tried to fly?” Lisa asked him one day when they walked into the dingy apartment they called a safe house and found Len drawing blueprints on the wall with a Sharpie. He never even glanced at them, too busy muttering about security systems.

“He’s just weird,” Mick told her, but even he didn’t sound convinced. Len _had_ fallen pretty hard the last time. “Boss, just let the wings out. You keep rolling your shoulders like that, you’re gonna pop something.”

“I don’t think he’s listening.”

“He never listens,” he sighed. “Go do your homework. When his head comes back to Earth, he’s gonna start riding you about your next English test.”

“I’ve been studying for _weeks_.”

“It’s cute that you think he cares,” he said flatly. “Pretty sure he invented that helicopter parent bullshit people keep talking about. Move it.”

The eleven-year-old nodded reluctantly and hiked her backpack higher up on her shoulder. “Fine, but make sure he eats.”

“He’ll eat off a plate or I’m putting a bird feeder next to him and seeing what happens.”

He grinned back when she laughed and ruffled her curls before she hurried off towards the tiny room they’d set up for her. When the door clicked shut, he let out a long breath. Len still hadn’t seemed to notice them, too absorbed in whatever he was planning.

“You know,” he said as he came up on Len’s right, “there’s a line between careful and bat shit crazy. You passed it when you started writing on the walls.” That one was new, at least. Since they’d turned eighteen and Len rented the crap hole, he’d gotten used to walking in to see papers strewn over the floor. The whiteboard in the corner was filled with Len’s chicken scratch—nothing ironic there—and the wall beside it wasn’t looking much better. “Boss?”

Len didn’t reply.

Mick huffed, straining to listen to his partner’s muttering, but it was still too foreign. Len had been teaching him the finer points of security systems and he could crack the basics, but the high-tech stuff still sounded like Chinese to him on the best days. “Hey, Winged Wonder, you listening?”

He wasn’t. Not that Len ever listened to him, Mick conceded with a sigh. Days like these, he hated the guards for sticking the other teen in his cell, because if they hadn’t, he could have washed his hands of him. Instead, he’d ended up with a roommate that gave him a headache, but one that his mom’s bleeding heart had all but adopted. Len and Lisa had been a slave to her hot cocoa since day one and she damn well knew it.

He braced himself before he reached out to grab Len’s wrist, ready when the kid jerked and swung out with a punch from the left that he had to dodge. “Watch it, asshole,” he said as he twisted Len’s wrist and pushed him back against the wall. “It’s me. Calm the fuck down.”

“The hell are you doing?” Len snapped, defenses high. Mick knew Len didn’t like being touched. He could force himself calm if he saw it coming and knew it wasn’t meant to injure, but surprising him set him completely on edge.

Mick plucked the Sharpie out of Len’s hand. “You wanna explain why you just reverted to the terrible twos and started doodling on the walls?”

“They’re not doodles,” Len muttered. “They’re plans. The jewelry store-”

“Is an easy job. Even I could crack their security system.”

“The guards-”

“We have their schedules down to a science. Sit your ass down and relax for one second in your goddamn life. And let your wings out.”

“I’m fine.”

“You rented this place so you could have somewhere to stretch out without worrying about your dad.”

“That’s why _you_ wanted me to get it,” Len corrected him. “I wanted a place for planning.”

“Do I look like I care? Either way, you’re not getting your security deposit back now. Let them out. Lisa’s doing homework and I’m gonna get food going. You’re bitchier than normal when your wings get knotted up.”

“Screw you.”

“Not interested, Snart,” Mick called over his shoulder as he moved into the cramped kitchen. “I’m making stir fry. You pick out the veggies and I’m gonna tell your sister about who I saw you macking on last week.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What was her name?” he mused. “No, wait. His name. That’s right. His younger brother’s that kid she’s in love with. Jake-”

“Mick!”

 

 

A week later, he put the bird feeder next to Len when he wasn’t looking and sat back to see what happened.

Len threw it at his head, but only after he almost ate a handful of the shit.

Totally worth it.

 

 

The job went bad. They made it out by the skin of their teeth, hearts hammering and getaway car squealing around corners as they tried to get some distance before the cops got there. The sound of the alarm echoed in his head as he slowed the car to a speed that was less suspicious and let them blend into normal traffic.

“They updated the security system.”

Len let out a shuddering breath, one hand laid flat at the base of his ribcage as he tried to calm himself. “I noticed. I should have-”

“They just put it in. You couldn’t have known,” Mick interrupted before Len could do that thing he did where he spiraled into a messy fit of insecurities and self-loathing. He didn’t have time to deal with that crap when he was still half-convinced he was about to have a heart attack. “Shit happens. We got out.”

“Barely.”

“You see the cops on our tail? I didn’t think so.” He huffed and dug around in his pocket until his fingers touched cold metal. He pressed it into Len’s hand. “I snatched that before we ran. See? We got something out of it.”

“It’s a ring.”

“We were at a jewelry store. What did you expect?” He waved a hand vaguely. “I grabbed the first thing I saw. Thing’s ugly as shit, but it looked like something you’d wear.”

“You proposing, Mick?” Len drawled and he could _hear_ the fucking smirk. Mick was going to punch him.

“Fat fucking chance. You’ve got pretty eyes, but I want to marry in my species,” Mick said with grin right before his face turned serious. “Am I taking you back to the apartment?”

Len shook his head. “Home. I need to get back to Lisa.”

Mick’s jaw tightened at the same time his grip on the steering wheel did. “Okay.”

 

 

Len started wearing the ring on the _significant_ fucking finger, because he was a too-skinny little shit and it wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

His mom started making points to remind him that she loved him and accepted him, which was kind of weird.

His dad kept giving long-suffering sighs, the same way Mick had a few years back when he realized he was stuck with Len for the long haul.

His siblings asked why they weren’t invited to the wedding and Mick set a few fires to get _that_ mental image out of his head, the annoying little bastards.

Lisa laughed her ass off, but she’d always been as batty as her brother.

 

 

“Why the hell are you still living there?” Mick sighed one day when Len walked into the apartment-slash-safe-house with a bruise dark on his temple and finger-shaped marks on his neck. He met Len where he stood, because he _knew_ the shaky hold his partner had on the doorframe meant Len was barely holding himself up.

“Lisa.”

He huffed and lowered Len onto the couch. “I know that, you shit. It was a rhetori-whatever question.”

“Rhetoric,” Len corrected lightly before he squinted at him. “You knew that.”

“Wanted to make sure you did,” he shot back, but he couldn’t muster the joking smile and let out a sigh instead. “He’s gonna scramble your brains one of these days.”

Len’s lips quirked up.

“That wasn’t me making an egg joke, dumbass. I’m serious.” He pinched Len’s thigh. “Look at me. I gotta see if you’ve got a concussion.”

He did, but it wasn’t anything different from what he usually had—headaches and a lack of balance that got him sent to the bedroom. His own instincts—with a voice that sounded annoyingly like his mother—yelled at him to get the skinny bastard fed, but experience told him Len wouldn’t be able to keep much down until the next day.

He paged Lisa when Len’s speech turned into pained mutterings and damn near bit through his lip before she managed to call him back.

“I’m okay,” she promised. “Dad went to the bar after him and Lenny fought.”

“Where are you? Do you need me to pick you up?”

“Jackie’s having a sleepover. Lenny dropped me off.”

Hazy memories of a redhead with glasses came to mind, along with memories about dropping Lisa off there before. The girl lived over by the end of the school district, closer to Keystone than to Central.

That stupid bastard drove. He could barely drive when he _wasn’t_ concussed.

“Is Lenny in trouble?” Lisa asked cautiously, but there was a hint of humor in her tone, because she knew Mick being mad at Len was a lot different than their dad being mad.

“Chicken Little’s gonna get his wings plucked,” he muttered.

She burst into giggles.

 

 

He called home long enough to tell his mom he was staying in Central for the weekend and deal with her worrying. Simple life as they led, it didn’t mean she was stupid. Admittedly, she’d picked up the hints a lot faster than he did, always sure to move a little more carefully around Len and Lisa. She didn’t ask about the bruises, but he heard her whispering angrily to his father about the things she wanted to do to Lewis.

His father huffed in agreement the way he always did and Mick wondered if there was some hypocrisy in the whole thing. The man still took a belt to Mick’s backside if his actions called for it, but maybe there was a limit to what was okay and what wasn’t.

Mick was pretty damn sure that if he ever had kids—not that he wanted them, anyway—he’d be pretty firm in the whole no-hitting camp.

Len had his wings out when he made it back to the room, arched and bent forward around him like it was supposed to cocoon him. It didn’t look comfortable, even if the wings were stupidly pretty. Someone that annoying shouldn’t get to be pretty, he thought. It wasn’t fair.

“If you puke again, I’m not cleaning it up,” he warned as he approached the bed.

Len let out a short laugh that still sounded pained. “Pretty sure that’s done.” Which didn’t say much, because he knew Len’s track record with this shit. Still, he sat next to him and reached out to stroke the space on his partner’s back between the wings. Len let out a noise before he relaxed.

“Told you to let these things out yesterday,” he told him, rolling his eyes. “You know you feel better when your back’s not tensed up too.”

“You know he hates the wings.”

Yeah, Mick fucking knew. The last time Lewis had seen so much as a feather, he’d twisted Len’s arm until it broke. He didn’t want to think about if the same crap happened to one of Len’s wings. They didn’t have the time for those kinds of complications.

“Can’t we just take her?”

Len huffed, but it sounded amused, if a little tired. “That’s called kidnapping.”

“Somehow, I don’t think he’d notice.” But he would and they both knew it. The next time Lewis needed something to hang over Len’s head, he’d go looking for Lisa and there would be hell to pay if he couldn’t find her.

Len sighed. “It’s only a matter of time before he ends up back in prison.”

“It’s only a matter of time before he kills your stubborn ass,” Mick muttered under his breath.

“Mick-”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Shut up and relax, Foghorn.”

“He’s a _rooster_.”

“Do I look like I care?”

The End


End file.
